What’s the difference between art and movies? To many, one is ivory-tower academicism, the other populist popcorn. But TIFF curator Andréa Picard says the genres are closer than you might think. “Dialogue has always happened between film and modern art,” she said this week while installing the fest’s gallery-based program, Future Projections.

“Gus Van Sant was a painter, Abbas Kiarostami is a photographer, Peter Greenaway came from an art background. There’s these interdisciplinary minds at work, but sometimes they become known in one discipline and not the other.” With that in mind, here are some white-cube tips for our darkened-cinema bash, with all shows running to Sept. 18.

For Substance Seekers There’s serious, yet seriously enjoyable, works at Future Projections this year — many by Toronto artists. At the top of the heap is Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatsky’s terrific Road Movie, showing at 51 Woleseley St. Demonstrating that there’s often more than two sides to every story, Road Movie’s layered look at life in Israel and Palestine unfolds across six screens on three wall-like structures. Though some might find the premise heavy-handed — one side of the “walls” features stories from travels with Israelis, the other side tales from journeys with Palestinians — this duo weaves an experience that is elegant and unexpected.

Also strong is Nicholas and Sheila Pye’s show Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board at Birch Libralato (129 Tecumseth St.). The Pyes may have split romantically, but their collaborative art practice continues to chug along here with a characteristically dreamy brew of sensual and painterly psychic dramas. In the central work, The Flower Eaters, one artist eats a rose, while the other plucks petals from their mouth — a mythical, ancient-seeming premise remade Gen Y style.

Finally, veteran filmmaker Peter Lynch’s Buffalo Days gives the ROM’s gloomy Spirit House (100 Queen’s Park) some much-needed, well, spirit, marrying views of Alberta landscapes with an evocative soundtrack of Blackfoot drumming. Also promising: When David Rokeby’s electronic installations work (like his light cube at Telus House) they’re wondrous. When there’s technical glitches, not so much. Fingers crossed for his effort at the Drake Hotel (1150 Queen St. W.).

For Celebrity HuntersJames Franco and Gus Van Sant — speaking Sept. 10 from 5 to 6 p.m. at TIFF’s BlackBerry Lounge — are the big-name draws in the fest’s art offerings this year. Their show Memories of Idaho (at the Lightbox lobby, 350 King St. W.) focuses on a third megastar, River Phoenix, melding River-centric outtakes from My Own Private Idaho with pics of the Portland street hustlers that inspired that movie role.

Offering a decidedly different spin on celebrity homage is Mr. Brainwash, the satirical, commercialization-loving street artist who won fame in the 2010 documentary (slash mockumentary) about Banksy, Exit Through the Gift Shop. Brainwash’s kitschy show at Yorkville’s Gallery One (115 Scollard St.) is almost like a meta-commentary on the art world — an experiment in who will buy bad work if a big name is attached, whether it’s Brainwash’s or that of a subject like Charlie Chaplin or Michael Jackson. (An exception: prints that steal Warhol’s soup-can motif and revamp it as a spraypaint can to poke directly at capital’s sway on street art.) A surer Brainwash/Banksy bet is the outdoor mural on tap for the side of Gallery One’s building and stencils planned for Pecault Square, which Brainwash (?) told me could include Toronto police officers wielding boom mics and spotlights.

For Cinema Geeks Best known for staging elaborate, psychologically probing scenes, acclaimed U.S. photographer Gregory Crewdson turned his lens recently to an unexpectedly documentary-style project: shooting the Italian Cinecittà film studios where majestic old Fellini sets have been left to rot. His pics in delicate black and white — on view at the Contact Gallery (80 Spadina Ave.) — evoke Roman ruins, underlining that way of filmmaking as something from another era. Award-winning U.K. artist Ben Rivers is also enamoured of the old ways; his enigmatic Slow Action at Gallery TPW puts a massive 16mm anamorphic projector prominently on display. Also promising: Cannes darling Duane Hopkins, who brings his Sunday to MOCCA (952 Queen St. W.) during the fest.

For Art Addicts There’s plenty in TIFF’s regular program for art lovers, too. Fans of vanguard German painter Gerhard Richter, whose survey opens at the Tate next month, won’t want to miss the doc Gerhard Richter Painting, screening Sept. 10, 12 and 18. Before he made it big with Hunger, Steve McQueen’s films haunted art museums worldwide. His new flick Shame focuses on appetites of the carnal nature (Sept. 11 and 13). Guy Maddin’s Keyhole sees the revered Canadian auteur shift to digital on Sept. 9 and 11. And Wavelengths Program 4 on Sept. 11 bookends Black Mirror at the National Gallery (a new short by Canadian Venice Biennale alum Mark Lewis) with local up and comers Chris Kennedy and Blake Williams.